The One You Feed - How to Find Balance Between Struggle and Growth with Lama Rod Owens

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Lama Rod Owens, a renowned Buddhist teacher and author, shares his journey of self-discovery and the importance of finding the balance between struggle and growth in our lives. As he delved into the ancient wisdom of Buddhism, he realized that the love and care he cultivated for himself was the foundation for his ability to share that love with others. Lama Rod’s teachings remind us that true change begins with individual work and self-awareness, which then ripples out to positively impact our relationships and communities. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the hidden benefits of struggle and how it can enhance personal growth Find out how to balance contracting and expansive activities to ensure a well-rounded and fulfilling lifestyle Uncover the secrets to pursuing meaningful work that aligns with your passions and values Learn practical self-care strategies to prioritize your well-being and maintain balance in your daily life Explore the transformative power of struggle and how it can lead to personal growth and positive change To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The love and care that I cultivate for myself is the love and care that I'm able to share with others, not the other way around. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really no really.com

and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really no really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts thanks for joining us our guest on this episode is Lama Rod Owens, a black Buddhist Southern queen, an international influencer with a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist studies from Harvard Divinity School. He's the author of Love and Rage, The Path of Liberation Through Anger, and co-author of Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. and co-author of Radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation.

Lama Rod's teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care. Applauded for his mastery in balancing weighty topics with a sense of lightness, The Queen has been featured by various national and international news outlets. He's highly sought after for talks, retreats, and workshops, and his mission is showing you how to heal and free yourself. excited to talk about that. And you've just been somebody I've been wanting to talk to for a while, so I'm glad we're getting to make this happen. But before we start, we'll start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred

and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Absolutely. Yeah, that's such a powerful parable. And I feel, you know, a lot of connections to very similar kind of cultural parables I've studied in the past. But, you know, in this really Buddhist sense, like, it's really the work of what we're investing in. You know, what are we going to put our energy into? Right? Or are we going to put our energy into ultimately the reduction of suffering? Or are we feeding the suffering? And it's not always the case that we're solely feeding one, one of these wolves and neglecting the other. Sometimes it's we're feeding one really well and maybe leaving scraps, you know, for the other or vice versa. You know, but for me, you know, I think about this parable in relationship to a garden, to sowing a garden, you know, planting seeds. And I think about the care that it takes to grow plants, you know, and the water, the sunlight, good soil, right, good temperature, you know, will ultimately start with good seeds, right? Good temperature, you know, will ultimately start with good seeds, right? And that all takes a lot of work and effort that we invest into cultivating these seeds and really creating this

harvest, you know, over the growing season. Sometimes we're just confused as to what we're taking care of and what we're feeding. You know, sometimes we think that we're feeding the good wolf when we're actually feeding the bad wolf, you know, or we think that we're taking care of and what we're feeding. Sometimes we think that we're feeding the good wolf when we're actually feeding the bad wolf, or we think that we're really taking care of our plants when in fact that's not the care that they need. It's just the honestness and awareness of my experience. Am I suffering less or am I suffering more? But another level of subtlety here that's important in my work is that it's not that I want to neglect the bad wolf, but I still want to tend to the bad wolf, right? And for me, tending to means that I'm just really holding these other experiences of suffering with

a lot of care, you know, a lot of tenderness. I am recognizing them. I'm naming them. I'm just allowing them to be in my experience, but I'm not reacting to them, right? And that's how I kind of tend to the good wolf or take care of my garden. Yeah. You say in the new book, but choosing goodness doesn't mean I stand in opposition to darkness. It means that I recognize that darkness is asking to be held in care and awareness. And then you go on to say, if I can hold darkness like this, then it becomes a teacher. When I can't hold it, then it holds me. And this is the beginning of evil. Yeah. Yeah. When we get consumed by it, right? Because that reactivity

to darkness actually means that I start being consumed by it. But I don't want to push anything away. I want to bring everything into balance. To recognize what's happening, to not react to everything, but to figure out how to respond. The darkness is full of so much data for me. right you know the darkness is full of so much data for me it is a teacher because it is full of something that i am being asked to be in relationship with right you know to name the darkness and to hold space for the darkness means that like i'm consuming the darkness instead of the darkness consuming me and if i can hold darkness like that, then

I actually end up being much more truthful, right? And honest about who I am, right? And that cuts through a lot of shame for me, right? When I can take care of my darkness, I'm not trying to push it away or hide it for someone to find and to point out, you know, for me. Right? It's like, yeah, people come to me and say, oh, yeah, Rod, like you do X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, yeah, I do. You know? And I have done that in the past.

Right? But that's part of what it means to be human. You know, I'm not trying to become a deity or a god. I'm trying to be human, which means that I am experiencing the totality of my thoughts and emotions and my sensations. And I'm developing a deep empathy for all other humans going through the same process. So it's them, it's's me but together it's us we you know moving through this process of trying to suffer less and trying to achieve some level of enlightenment yeah so you just said that you know your goal is not to be a deity but to be human and yet you've titled your new book the new saints which saints tend to be, when we think

of them, closer to a deity than a human, at least in certain people. Talk to me about why you chose that title and what you mean by a new saint. Yeah, because I wanted to make sainthood attainable for everyone, not extraordinary, right? And, you know, when this book started coming about for me, and this was during the quarantine after my last book came out, and just really sitting with a pandemic, sitting with the murder of George Floyd and the movement for Black Lives, and I just started asking myself, okay, what am I doing? Like, what am I going to offer to this new age or this new period? And I just thought, well, I think people need a really clear guide on what it means to change, right? To care about themselves, to care about the world, right?

Because a lot of folks were just like, what do I do? What do I do? You know, some people were saying, all I can do is post on social media, you know, but no, that actually has to be more, right? And I also knew that my experiences had to be the template. You know, I had to use my life as a way to create a connection to other people to say, you know what? Yeah, I'm human too, right? And these are the things that I struggle with, but these are the tools that I'm using to cultivate deeper awareness and care for myself and for others.

And I just believe that this is what the saints were basically doing. They weren't trying to be gods. They were trying to help, right? And they were connected to their most authentic selves, which we may call divine or sacred, but that's the capacity that all humans have is to connect to that kind of direct caring expression of who we really are. And for me, that's sainthood, right? And it doesn't mean develop and awaken special abilities, right? It could mean that, but that's not what I'm talking about, right?

I mean, the greatest expression of a saint is to care really deeply, to love deeply, to express really profound compassion for themselves and for others around them, right? And because that expression was so direct and simple and profound, people said, oh, like you're special, right? And that expression of deep care lasts, right? It's not that, you know, when this person dies, that their care dies with them. Their care imprinted the world, imprinted communities and people, and influenced people to do something different, right? And of course, in some traditions, those are the qualifications of being recognized as a saint. Your care endures

beyond your death, and we can still rely on that example of care to create a more liberated, caring world. Yeah, one of the things that your work touches on a lot, I think, is this real intertwining of individual liberation and collective liberation, right? And, you know, one of the criticisms that is leveled often at the modern mindfulness movement, and all forms of Buddhism can be put under this heading as showing up that way, is that it's too focused on the individual and not enough on the other. And we also see people who are very committed to social liberation, social change, that we can often see either for their own health or the people around them may need a little more investment in their individual healthiness and

freedom and liberation. How do you think about knowing when and where to invest in each? Or is it really a continuous investing in both all the time? Like, help me think through that, because I think this is a really nuanced point. Yeah, an incredibly important point here. And as I was writing the book and really sharing this, you know, this work with people, you know, this was the exact kind of feedback that I got. You know, this seems really individual. that I got, you know, this seems really individual. And of course, you know, for me is how can I actually create the change that I need to see if I have no idea who I am and how I show up, how I impact relationships and communities, right? Because I can bypass myself and do really great

things in the community, but then we've seen examples of people who have really done very little work for themselves and how they end up being exposed as really violent people and creating harm, right? You know, when they're not in the public, right? And being seen. And so another, you know, kind of teaching that I often share with the folks is that if I don't do my work, then I become work for others as well. So, I kind of like pulled all this together and said, okay, in this text, I need to really, really state the importance of individual work, right? Because my individual work, you know, even more specifically, I will say that the love and care that I cultivate for myself is the love and care that I'm able to share with others, not the other way around,

right? It's not that the love and care that I cultivate for others is what I actually offer back to myself. It's the reverse. Whatever you're feeling from my work and from my teaching and from just interacting with me is rooted in how I relate to myself. And this care and love that I experience for myself has come with a lot of deep individual practice away from others, right? It has come from going through periods of being really selfish. That selfishness is skillfully used to create the conditions for me to really focus on how I'm suffering and how to reduce that suffering for myself. What I learn from the work that I do for myself is what I take and offer to others in my community. So if I'm not doing this individual work, then like for me, it gets really difficult

to figure out how to show up in a way that's helpful, right? And if I don't do this work for myself, then I'm just putting all this work onto others, right? Because they're having to do emotional labor for me because i haven't done the work for myself to cultivate an awareness of what i need so let me follow that up with a variation on that question because you've been practicing i think 20 years you've done multiple months in silent retreat right you've been years yeah. So you've been extraordinarily invested in that process. I don't think you are suggesting that people wait until they've got that level of practice behind them to begin to offer things to the world.

So how do you think about knowing when you've got enough going on inside yourself that you have something to offer to others? Well, you know what? As soon as I started practicing buddhism and meditation i was teaching right and i don't know what that was maybe it was ego but like i felt like i got something that other people needed to get particularly people who look like me and who wouldn't be open to receiving this work from anyone else that didn't look like them? So I felt that urgency early on. But for me, as a teacher, one of my kind of like ethics around teaching is that I never share anything with others that I haven't practiced for myself. Right. So that doesn't mean that like I wait years and years to practice something.

Right. So that doesn't mean that like I wait years and years to practice something. It means that like, yeah, I can intensively practice something for a very short period of time and learn something really valuable. And and really get a lot of data out of it, then I feel really comfortable in sharing that. So it's almost as if you're building the plane as you're flying. Yeah. Right. Reminds me of, I'm a recovering heroin addict and I got sober through 12 step programs. And right away you sort of learned like, well, I've only got two weeks, but somebody who's walking in the door has no time. And two weeks is a pretty big accomplishment if you've got nothing, right? It's not the same as two years, of course, but I do know something, a little bit of something that I can pass on. And then of course, there's that whole symbiosis of me sharing what I have with you is good for both of us. Exactly. Because it creates a community of support.

Yeah. Like where we all get together and say, you know what? I have something. You have something. Right. But it reminds me of another kind of old story called Stone Soup that, you know, we used to read when we were little. The story of Stone Soup is that there was this village and this guy shows up and it's kind of like the music man, you know, but it works out, you know, well for everyone.

But this guy shows up in the village and says, I can make the best soup you've ever tasted. Right. And everyone was like, okay, right. So where are your ingredients? Where is, where, you know, where are your pots and your pans and he was like well i'll just have to like gather a few things from people you know so he gets the pot from someone he gets someone else to fill it with water then he's like oh does someone have an onion or two or does someone have some other vegetables and so forth and so on so the whole village has gathered like to put something that they have extra of into the pot to make this soup but he started with a stone he was like i have a rock you know and that was the first well actually he puts the rock into the pot and water

first and then people come along and say you you need more than that. You know, you need more than water and a rock. I have something in my house to throw in. And that's how he got the soup going. And the story is really about building community with the resources that people have. You know, I have an onion, but I'm not going to eat an onion, but another person has a pot. Another person has some water. Another person has some salt, so forth and so on until you build something communally together that's really amazing. And I think we forget that sometimes. We forget that we don't have to have all the resources and all the solutions, that we pull everything together

into a pot and create something that helps everyone. Yeah, that's a great story. I love that one. You say that the path of a new saint is a path of freedom, not of comfort remember a state of being that transcends all of this dualism, you know, of comfort and discomfort, pleasure and displeasure, to return back to our natural state, which is just being, being beyond suffering, which is really hard for us to conceptualize because all we know is suffering and discomfort. That's the freedom, you know, that I'm really thinking about, you know, and really have organized my whole life around as the primary focus, right? And so when I talk about going for freedom, I'm talking about going all the way. When we establish happiness or comfort, right, as the goal, we practice for that goal. We may actually get there,

right? But it doesn't go further than that, right? You can still be happy in a world that's falling apart, you know? Like you can watch any reality show about very wealthy people, right? Like they can navigate, you know, a shortage of resources, right? And so when I talk about letting go of happiness or comfort as the goal, I'm saying that once you go for freedom completely, all the stuff is going to happen. Like there will be happiness and joy. There's going to be a way that we experience a lot of comfort, even as we struggle to get free, right? And so for me, I might as well shoot for the whole thing and get everything instead of shooting for going halfway and just stopping

halfway, right? But again, you have to get clear about if you're really ready to let go of suffering, right? Because we have definitely created identities around suffering. Suffering is who I am, right? And to let go of identifying with suffering means that I have to figure out who I am. And that can be terrifying for many of us, right? To let go of everything that I know, to shoot for this ambiguous, abstract experience of freedom. Like, that's a lot. You're putting a lot on the table. That's a huge gamble.

I can only do that because I have studied with people who have gone all the way. You know, I come from a tradition that is based upon people going all the way to enlightenment. Right? And so there's all this data and proof and personal experience. So, like, I have no problem going for that. And ultimately, yeah, and I'm just tired of suffering. You know, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, as Fannie Lou Hamer once famously said. And so, therefore, I've put everything on the table and I'm going all the way.

Enlightenment or bust, that's the slogan. Now, do you find that that is a place people often work themselves into? I think a lot of people in my experience come to practice, spiritual practice of any sort, kind of under the yoke of severe suffering, of acute suffering. And in the beginning, it's like, if I could just not shoot heroin, or if I can just get over my wife leaving me, or if I, you know, that's what I'm after. And then it seems that for a lot of people, as we stay on the path longer, we begin to see further down the path and go, Oh, okay, to see further down the path and go, oh, okay, there's somewhere further to go. So we can start in a place of maybe just wanting a little happiness or a little bit of comfort. But if

we're sincerely engaged in the practice, do you believe it generally will lead us forward and beyond? It can. Absolutely. For me, I was longing for freedom from the very beginning. You know, like, so happiness and comfort felt really almost impossible for me. Right. And I kept looking and searching and reading and of course, you know, getting into Black liberation work and the writings and the thoughts, you know, thinkers around that, getting into activism and everything. Everything that I did up until I met Buddhism, started practicing Buddhism, was this kind of pursuit of what freedom really felt like.

And then Buddhism was like, oh, this is freedom, right? Like, this is what you've been looking for is to transcend all of this, right? And again, for me, it was easier because one, I had a natural orientation, but secondly, I started meeting people who were much further into this work than I was. And I said, oh, I want to be exactly like them. Like I started meeting teachers who had actualized this kind of mental and emotional freedom that I didn't even think was possible, you know? And that galvanized my work. And I just put everything on the table. I was like, this is what I'm going for, right? I can be free. I can have this level of freedom

in my body, in this world, right? And if that wasn't the case, I wouldn't be here. right and if that wasn't the case I wouldn't be here like I don't think I would have survived yeah you know the suffering that I was moving through We all know that good habits are ways that we bring what we value into the world. And we each have our own list of what matters to us. Maybe you want to feel more energetic, improve your relationships, have a tidier home, cook more instead of eating out four nights a week. Whatever habit you want to build, it's entirely possible to make it happen. But if you feel under-equipped and overwhelmed to make real sustainable change, you are not alone. And that's why I've made my free masterclass open to everyone and available to watch anytime now. It's called Habits That Stick, How to Be Remarkably Consistent No Matter What Goal You Set. You can grab it at

oneufeed.net slash habits. Again, it's free and you can watch it whenever it works for you. Go to oneufeed.net slash habits. cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian

Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, Not Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really.

Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I remember the first time I was exposed to Buddhism. It was Zen Buddhism, and it was in high school, and a teacher gave me maybe, you know, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I don't know. I didn't understand 99% of what I was reading, but I got some intuition that what they were talking about

was the ability to be okay, regardless of the way my life on the outside appeared to go. And even by that age, I was pretty clearly convinced like the world's a rough place, you know, and we don't have complete control over what circumstances show up for us. And so I was very early, I was just drawn into that idea of like, oh my goodness, there's a peace that's beyond circumstance. And to me, that's kind of what we're talking about here, right? As far as freedom goes, you said to transcend the causes and conditions of suffering. I'm wondering if we could drill down on the word suffering for a minute, because different people use this idea and this word in different ways.

And you don't mean the ability to go beyond ever feeling any sort of discomfort or pain, or is that what you mean? What do you mean when you say transcending or going beyond the causes and conditions of suffering? What does that look like for a human being to actually get there? Yeah. As an embodied being, so in the body, in this world, in the relative, to experience this kind of complete freedom means that I actually recognize the illusion of everything. Right? Especially the sense of self or ego, right? Who I thought I was, I am not. That begins to free us from these patterns and these narratives, right? That reinforce this I that can suffer, that can be uncomfortable,

that can suffer, that can be uncomfortable, right? You know, I think this is a useful, you know, kind of analogy that was taught to me by one of my professors in graduate school. But, you know, suffering is like cooking a really nice spaghetti dinner, you know, tomato sauce, and then taking the leftover sauce, the red sauce, and putting it into a Tupperware. But you can't really find a top that fits well. So you find the closest thing, right? And a lid that really doesn't fit well, but it'll keep the food covered.

It'll keep the sauce covered when you put it in the fridge. So you put it in the fridge, and then sometime down the road, you go and open the fridge, and that Tupperware falls out. And because the top didn't really fit the container, the red sauce spills all over your clothes, all over the floor, and you have this huge mess. And that's suffering, right? No matter what we do in this life, we'll never get to a place where it feels like everything makes sense. Everything's right. Everything fits.

Like this will never make sense, complete sense, no matter how hard I try. So the first step is just recognizing that, oh yeah, this is like this Tupperware and this top do not match. And I can hold that, you know, and I can name that and proceed forward, understanding that I'm not here to try to make this make sense. I'm here to figure out how to transcend my need for Tupperware or anything to begin with. Yep. I just think this is a very important point and a place that people who don't understand Buddhism well often get lost, right? Because that can sound like complete detachment. Yeah.

And I don't think that's what you're saying. And some people will say something like, well, you know, if my mother dies, shouldn't I be sad? Isn't that like a normal human reaction? So put a little finer point on this. Yeah. Well, everything is just an experience. It's not inherently who I am. Yes.

So I can mourn the loss of someone that I love. And I do that every time I lose someone that I love. But I know that this is just an experience, not moving through. And that what I'm actually trying to do is to be present, to feel it, to name it, right? To be in it, right? Because the deeper I get into experiencing, the less suffering actually that I go through, right? And the more I get into it,

the more I'm able to just release it, to let it go, to let it pass. You know, like things just pass through our experience, thoughts and emotions pass through our minds, through our bodies, right? These are just energies, right? And I know that mourning, right, the mourning that I do is just one experience that I can have because I can also experience joy even in the midst of mourning, right? I can struggle and still feel deep gratitude for being in the world

and for going through what I'm going through. We talked about being consumed by things. And I think that so much of what prevents us from experiencing a kind of fluidity and openness and spaciousness is how we get really centered into experiences of comfort or even joy or pleasure, you know? And for me, I am practicing to hold space for everything, both the good and the bad, so to speak, right? And not to just always push things away or to grab onto things, but to say everything is arising, right? And I get to choose how to tend to everything that's arising. I get to choose what

to invest in and to divest from as well. I'm talking about essentially fundamental agency, like to get to this point where I am choosing in complete awareness to choose what my experience will be and how to manage my experience instead of unconsciously reacting to everything that arises, which creates this experience of being overwhelmed and consumed. Right. You've got a line in the book. I really like it. You say, when I say freedom or liberation, I'm talking about our fundamental capacity to choose responsiveness over reactivity. For me, that's a really important kind of freedom that I have been working on in my meditation practice. So that kind of responsiveness helps me to really be in the world and not be afraid of

the world, right? Because I have this agency to choose how to respond to what's happening. I don't have to react, potentially creating more harm, more chaos, you know, and adding more, you know, this frantic energy into the world. I get to say, you know what, this is happening. The anxiety, the sadness, the despair, the hopelessness, the grief, all of that can arise. And I can just notice it, name it, I can experience it, right? I don't have to grab onto it, right? But I have to show up and be there with it. And that's how I tend to everything that arises, right? I tend to everything. I take care of everything, but I don't have to respond to everything, you know, that comes up, right? And that's how I practice a kind of a health, a mental health, a physical

health. But like, that's how I ultimately practice self-care is by getting clear about what I'm reacting to and how to respond, you know, essentially. So as you go through in the book, you're describing sort of some of the characteristics of a new saint. And one of them I think is interesting because you've talked a little bit about this fundamental notion in Buddhism that there isn't really a self in the way that I think there is, right? I'm identified as this thing, but that thing is sort of made up of lots of other things for lack of a better way to say it, right? It's not a discrete entity.

It's just a combination of other things. But you also talk about how a new saint also understands identity. And I assume in that sense you're using identity in the sense of you being a queer black man as an identity right so talk to me about how those two things kind of come together you know when is identity a useful idea for us and how do we use it and how self expresses itself into this reality. That meaning is based on interactions with others and other groups and other systems of thinking and behavior as well. Identity becomes useful because it creates a kind of connection of belonging to others. It creates community.

The overall identity is human. It creates a kind of human belongingness to all humans, right, which is incredibly important, right? Identity becomes a struggle when we start taking identity really seriously, right? And then we believe that identity means more than what it actually does. When identity becomes over-meaningful, then it becomes like something solid. It solidifies. And it blocks us from experiencing spaciousness and fluidity. It keeps us from connecting to this really translucent, illusionary quality of the phenomenal world.

That everything isn't so rigid, but we've made it really rigid, you know, because of our deep belief in meaning making, right? And of course, the sense of self and ego uses identity and the meanings around identity to create hierarchy, right? And that hierarchy is really about establishing the realness of ego. Because the ego doesn't have to be high, it can be low. I can think I'm the most important person in the world, or I can think I'm the most miserable person in the world. It's both of those extremes solidify ego. Ego, the sense of self that can experience these extremes.

ego, the sense of self that can experience these extremes, right? And what we're trying to do in terms of this liberation work is get back into the fluidity, the illusionary quality of all of these identities, right? I'm not trying to actually push anything away, and that's not the goal of Buddhism, is to erase ego and erase identity, but to come into a deeper awareness of what these experiences are. So we can say, yeah, these are experiences of my, you know, most authentic nature, but this isn't who I am. If I were to say I am anything, then I would say that I am an expression of space, emptiness, energy, that my consciousness is just energy. That's aware, right? Not gathered around this limiting sense of self, but is spacious, open, fluid, connected, right? That's what we're trying to get back to. And I can do that and at the same time identify identity right

but you have this space where you're understanding that yes and this isn't who i am either but this is like drag right that i'm doing right but then you start believing in the drag then that's when the problems start to arise. And that's the problem. We believe that this is who we are, that our race and class and sexual orientation and nationality and physical ability, all of that is who I am. And we weaponize this false belief of these identity locations being who we are against one another and also against ourselves as well. When it doesn't allow us to feel connected and feel fluidity and spaciousness and, you know, and connect us to like this experience of emptiness, then it gets in the way. And so you say that the new saint embraces rather than bypasses the complexity of identity. So by that, you mean being able to hold

both of those things. On one hand, in the descriptive terms, I'm a straight white male, and I'm also, as you said, empty. I'm empty of a real self. And being able to move fluidly between those two, it's sort of like the absolute and the relative, right? That idea of it and being able, at least in my tradition, Zen, where you can move back and forth between those two things. Yeah, you can move back and forth between them or they can just mix together. And you can say, I am and I'm not. Right? Because everything becomes a response in that space so i am actually choosing how to identify knowing that this choice is actually you know quite illusionary right but i intentionally

make this choice because this is how i belong in the relative right And if I'm not trying to belong, then what am I doing here? You know? Because if I'm not trying to belong to see myself in others, then I'm actually kind of solidifying the sense of self. You know, the sense of self gets real because I'm special and I don't belong in terms of community. I'm not a part of this human community. I'm actually quite special and we have to disrupt that, you know? So we bring these extreme teachings together.

I am and I'm not. And that is an experience that disrupts a lot of fixation, you know? And a real kind of like result of that kind of practice is that you just feel the spaciousness you feel you can say i am you can say i am a man right and you can actually connect to what that has meant individually and systematically what that has meant historically right and you can say and this is just an experience of who i am right and that experience frees us from this intense self-identification it says yeah being a man is just an experience like it's not inherently who i am right you know but when i say i am a man this is am, I'm fixed, it becomes a kind of rigidity. Of course, that rigidity is where, you know,

relative patriarchy springs from. Right. You know, I've trapped myself in this identity location and there's nowhere else to go, right? And that's real violence for against ourselves and against countless people, right, who are situated outside of this rigid space that we've locked ourselves into.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who

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Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, really.

No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So you talk about four primary activities that a new saint is going to engage in. You know, the first is to give a shit about everyone's liberation, to figure out their work, what they are supposed to do, to do that work, and then return to that work again and again. So, elaborate any of those four or the whole concept. Riff on whatever you want out of what I just read there. Yeah. First, I think most importantly is that we give a shit. We care. We care about ourselves. We

care about other people. We care about the environment. We care about animals. We care about ourselves. We care about other people. We care about the environment. We care about animals. We care about the phenomenal world, right? And that's a tantric principle. Buddha's tantric principle says that when we talk about care and love, we're talking about caring, loving all phenomena. You know, not just living or conscious phenomena, but like inanimate phenomena, like everything that arises, like I care about, and that helps me to stay present and aware to what's happening, right? But, you know, when we talk about caring, yes, it's like, yeah, there's suffering, and I want to be free from that

suffering. And if I want to be free from that suffering, it seems like everyone else does, It seems like everyone else does, right? And then you figure out like what the work is. Like how do you disrupt suffering? What's your path? What's your modality? Like what are you reading? Who are you studying with?

Who are your communities that's helping you to do this work, right? And then you do it, right? And it's hard. Sometimes I say it's like going to the front lines of your work. You go to your front lines, right? You don't get behind someone else. No one's front line is being behind someone else and encouraging them on work, no matter how hard it is, right? And so once you get there, you keep reminding yourself, no, this is where I'm at. So you keep returning over and over and over again. That doesn't mean that you don't get to take a break, right? Like we all need a break, right? But once you take a break, which I call self-care in the

book, once you do that care, you return back over and over and over again. And if everyone is doing that, then we will see, you know, the awakening of this much more liberated future, right? But I think that's really the hard piece here is figuring out what your work is and doing it because it may not look so glamorous as other people's work right that's really hard sometimes our work is really invisible you know like our work may not be applauded i read so many stories about these different kinds of like situations wars and so forth where people were actively disrupting the impact of wars. Like, you know, I've been reading stories about the Holocaust, you know, and how people in countries that the Nazis were invading, they would do whatever they could to support,

you know, Jewish, you know, families and individuals and really put their lives on the line. That's going to your front line, you know? And we may not know all of these people who are doing this subversive work of keeping people safe, but they did, right? And that's what we do, you know? We'll be doing all kinds of work that will not be applauded, that won't be awarded. I'll also say that not all of us are going to be like Dr. King,

you know, or these great change makers that we all know and love. But that's okay, because that was their work. And we have the great opportunity to figure out what our work is and do it. How do people go about figuring that out, right? know everybody has ego and everybody wants to be dr king and one thing i have seen a lot of in people i've worked with is this sense people who are living what looked to me to be very good moral decent kind supportive lives who feel like they're not doing anything because they haven't founded an international charity to get rid of ringworm disease or something. Right. Absolutely. I think one of the things is for me, like, how am I helping the people around me first and foremost? Because sometimes when we have these dreams of establishing these huge

international movements, it's like we kind of bypass the people living around us and with us you know to go to this more idealized glamorous sexy kind of work where we're going to be recognized like so much of this gets derailed when we want to be applauded for the work instead of understanding that this is essentially what we should be doing, period. You know, this isn't, finding your work shouldn't be extraordinary. It should just be what we do as humans. You know, in my ethical framework based in Buddhism, like, I'm here to help. We should be helping each other. You know, I don't need to be applauded to do that. I'm just fulfilling my role and my path, you know. But I just really think that, like, when you just look around you, who are you living with?

Who's your family? Tell me about your family, how you're showing up in your family right now to reduce suffering, to support your family. Like, it's not glamorous. It's really hard, but that's important to do. Look at the suffering of the people around you first. And then you build from that if you need to, right? But again, like, I talk with folks who are doing all kinds of work and they're like, this isn't important. You know, I'm just a stay-at-home parent.

Or I work for a bank. Or, you know, I just serve at a restaurant, right? They're like, how can I possibly be doing the work? And I say, well, you know, the kindness that you're offering to the people you're caring for actually can really impact people, you know, in ways that you can't even imagine. You know, I've been all of these, I haven't been a stay-at-home parent, you know, but I've had a lot of mundane jobs where I've been like, this is pointless, this is useful, but I've challenged myself to show up and to really take care of people in the work that I'm doing. And that impacts people. Someone may come into a restaurant and just be having the worst

day, and then they're taken care of by a server who's just really kind, really present. And that changes people. And the change that they experience with this interaction with the server may actually inspire them to go out and to change different relationships that they're struggling in. You can't ever know. Of course, I think parenting and caretaking kids are just one of the most important things that we could be doing, right? And just the work that you're doing, they're choosing their joy, they're being fluid and open. And they just, they have a sense that like they have agency in their lives. That's what

we need from our young people. Right. And for caretakers who are really invested in that work, and I am very fortunate, all of my friends who are parenting are really deeply involved in that kind of caretaking. Like, they're very aware that they're raising kids that will one day really, like, be supporting the collective, you know. So, they're instilling into their kids everything that our generation struggled, you know, to cultivate. And that's not to blame our parents, right? But to recognize the difficulties and the challenges, you know, of figuring out what your work is, you know, and doing it. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about practice. And you say that practice is not easy and often

involves a fair amount of struggle. and that you and your practice appreciate struggle because it's how you register the effort that you invest into getting free. And it's also the process through which you get clear. Say a little bit more about that. I know I think some people are like, I don't want to struggle. This isn't helpful for me. As I talk about in the book, struggle for me is how I'm shaped. Struggle has really helped me to learn what to divest from. Because part of the struggle is that the struggle is actually reflecting back to me what I shouldn't be doing sometimes. But also struggle also can reflect back to me what I need to cultivate and awaken and really train in, right?

To develop a deeper competency and capacity to do, right? Because my struggle is sometimes not having what I need to do the work that I'm presented with, right? I think a lot of people are just tired right now and they want to practice. That's easy. And I just have never been that interested in easy. Like I have a personality that's like, let's just do it the hard way. Like literally, because I know what the hard way is, you know, but I think maybe I overvalue struggle, you know, in a way that other people way that other people are undervaluing it. But I just come from a community or culture where struggle has deeply defined our capacity to experience joy and community. Struggle has brought into context what is important for us, you know, and I just value that. You know, if something is worth doing, it's not going to be so easy. And I tell people too that like, if it's easy, it's probably not your work. Right? If you're complaining about the work, there's a good sign that you're where you need to be. Right? I mean, listen, I'm in that same boat. Like, yeah, I love doing what I'm doing. Like this work, you know, the writing, the teaching, this is the only thing that I want to do. And it's also a struggle. Yeah. Right. And some days I don't want to do shit. Yeah. Right. And it's okay. So I know that my love and my purpose will always bring me back to the work. So, for me, complaining is just a way that I'm, like, recognizing that this is difficult.

Yeah. And to honor resistance. Yeah. Instead of letting it consume me or letting it become something I'm pushing away, I just center it and say, yeah. Like, this is real work. And I gratefully do this, you know, at the same time. Yeah. I love that idea because there is a cultural narrative. You know, there's that old line, like if you do work that you love, you'll never work a day in

your life. And I'm like, that's nonsense. Like that's just absolute nonsense. Or that like, if it's hard, it means it's the wrong thing for me or, and I love how you're sort of separating a deeper understanding of meaning and purpose and love from the day to day ups and downs of being a human being. I didn't sleep real well last night. So you know what, writing that three paragraphs today just really kind of sucks because I'm really tired. You know, another day I might really like writing it, but that, you know, for me has been a learning of like, you know, I can love what I do and it's still be really hard sometimes and still really not want to do it some of the time. And that's not a sign that I've doing the wrong thing. Now it can be a sign

of that, but that's not the only thing it can mean. Absolutely. And for me, I think about regret quite a bit. And I don't want to end this life having regretted not doing the work that I was called to do. And I may not be great at the work. I think that also gets in the way. We think that we have to be amazing at the work that we're doing or what we love to do is that that's not always the case you know we can be kind of mediocre right but it's still what we should be doing right and of course what is mediocre or not is very subjective often you know but yeah and so like the love yeah the love for the work right, is a motivation that keeps me moving through the struggling of the work itself. Yeah. But I know what it feels like, you know, doing the work that I'm called to do and the impact that it has on people. And that's what also keeps me going as well. Yeah.

Later on in the book, you talk about this idea of expansive and contracting habits. You say, my self-care is about understanding how to balance contracting activity with expansive activity. We're naturally hovering between these two extremes because we're constantly negotiating work we don't want to do, prompting constriction, along with work we want to do, prompting openness. The goal is to train ourselves to balance these two experiences. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I talk about checking emails as one of those really contracting experiences.

I just kind of shut down. So I have a lot of aversion, you know? So I can check emails and say, you know what? I'm going to spend 30 minutes, which is a lot for me. This is like, that's a hell realm for me, 30 minutes of email. So I'm going to do 30 minutes of emails, but I'm going to balance that with 30 minutes or 45 minutes of taking a walk outside or sitting outside. Right.

And I just, I go back and forth like that because even that contracting work is being asked to be cared for and that care is pairing it with something that feels expansive and opening and restful, right? Instead of just spending hours and hours a day doing things that I don't want to do, I intersperse that work with things that open and expand and allow me to feel rested and restored. Well, we are at the end of our time. I have really appreciated this. You and I are going to go into a post-show conversation where you're going to lead us through a meditation that will sort of expand upon some of the ideas we've talked about

here. Listeners, if you'd like access to that, as well as ad-free episodes and other post-show conversations, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join and become part of our community and support the show. Lama Rod, thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure talking with you. I'm so glad I got to do it. Thank you. It's been great. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a

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